Interviews

Wasafiri Deputy Editor and writer, Vamika Sinha, spoke with 2025 International Booker Prize winners Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi (Wasafiri's inaugural International Translator in Residence) at a live event at Waterstones Islington, London. Read their wide-ranging conversation, where they explored what went into writing, compiling, and producing their winning collection, Heart Lamp.

Khaled Esguerra, Juan Gonzales, and Carlos Páez González came to the UAE at different ages. They hail from different backgrounds and engage in various forms of visual and performance arts. In Part 2 of their interview published in Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue – on how their practice generates conversations, and weaves collectives and audiences across different segments of UAE society – they elaborate further on these ideas while discussing what community building even means.

It is impossible to explore the UAE’s literary scene without probing its publishing landscape. Three bookmakers in conversation, Ahmad Makia, Zoe Patterson, and Vamika Sinha, are located at seemingly different ends of this spectrum. In Part 2 of their interview published in Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue – on engaging place, a text’s lifetime, and the necessity, or lack thereof, of an archive – they expand on these ideas while examining the wider UAE publishing landscape, its history, and their roles within it.

In this wide-ranging interview – on the humour of maps, immigration officers, pilfering through a father's library, and more – Safa Khatib speaks to poet and translator Mona Kareem about their collection I Will Not Unfold These Maps and the evolution of their poetics and practice amid Arabic and American publishing industries. This piece is published in tandem with Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, where Mona is a contributor.

Awarded Highly Commended in the 2024 Wasafiri Essay Prize for her paper on Selma Dabbagh's short fiction, Simar Bhasin speaks to us about her scholarship, championing Palestinian literature, love and desire as anticolonial forces, and more.

In April 2025, Wasafiri Editor and Publishing Director Sana Goyal spoke with author Gurnaik Johal at an event at Queen Mary, University of London, about the place of short stories within publishing, literary prize culture, the defiance of untranslated language, and more.  

We spoke to anthropologist Laure Assaf and writer Deepak Unnikrishnan about editing Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, which aims to move away from monolithic representations of the region. They discuss their personal histories with the country, surveillance, family, transience, gaze, theorising the UAE in real-time, and more.

Winner of the 2024 Wasafiri Essay Prize, Ashley Barr talks about discovering the subject of their winning essay, British-Indian poet Bhanu Kapil, private space, books they're reading right now, and whether academic writing should be niche or for the masses.  The 2025 Essay Prize is open for entries until 30 June.

In this exclusive interview, Romesh Gunesekera, Chair of the Judges of the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, discusses the evolving relevance of literary prizes, the importance of perseverance, and offers advice to prize entrants and aspiring writers.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 121, author Sohini Basak interviews Korean-American poet and translator Don Mee Choi. Speaking ahead of the UK/EU release of her book, Mirror Nation, Choi discusses the use of visuals in her poetry, the influence of her father's war photography, and overlaps between writing and translating.

We spoke to co-guest editors Tatevik Ayvazyan and Naneh V Hovhannisyan about curating, commissioning, and editing our winter 2024 special issue, Wasafiri 120: Armenian(s) – Elevation, which shines a light on modern Armenian identities and experiences.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 119: Futurisms, our Associate Editor So Mayer interviews Kaliane Bradley and Anton Hur about their recently published debut novels. They discuss narration and translation, the climate crisis and the erotic, and much more.

In this interview, Sanah Ahsan, and Gargi Bhattacharyya address the violence, inequality, and waste produced by racial capitalism, while also imagining modes of living otherwise.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 118: Abolitions - Writing Against Abandonment, Marral Shamshiri interviews Dr Mahvish Ahmad, Dr Koni Benson, and Dr Hana Morgenstern of the Revolutionary Papers, who discuss the importance of mobilising communities and connecting historical and contemporary radical archives to ongoing liberation struggles, all whilst looking at them through an anti-colonical lens.

Ahead of our launch event on 4 July, we spoke to co-guest editors Farhaana Arefin and Dr Abeera Khan about curating, commissioning, and editing Wasafiri 118: Abolitions - Writing Against Abandonment.

Ever wondered what your favourite author’s first drafts look like? Or which book they love that nobody’s heard of? Wasafiri  Wonders is a series that asks these questions for you. For this instalment, we spoke to the 2023 Wasafiri Essay Prize winner, Karthik Shankar, on his favourite reads, writing habits, and upcoming work.

In this wide-ranging and generous interview with Franklin Nelson – originally published in Wasafiri 117: The State of the Industry – Margo Jefferson discusses the critic at work and play. Read and download the interview in full on the Taylor & Francis website or order our Wasafiri 117 to read it in print.

Khairani Barokka, author and former editor of Modern Poetry in Translation, corresponded with Tiffany Tsao, fiction writer and translator of Indonesian literature, for Wasafiri 116: Shorelines: South East Asia and the Littoral.

In this expansive interview, Haiyan Xie talks to multiple-award winning author Yan Lianke. Together, they explore how stories resonate across different sociopolitical boundaries and the ways in which authors are reconceptualising realism.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 115, Silvia Rothlisberger speaks to the award-winning Argentinian author Claudia Piñeiro about the inspiration and inception of her 2021 novel, Elena Knows, which was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. Their conversation explores Piñeiro's writing process and Latin American identity, and spans wider themes from her work, such as motherhood, living with illness, suicide, religion, and crime fiction.

In this exclusive interview, Diana Evans, Chair of the Judges of the 2023 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, talks about the power and pitfalls of prize success, the importance of writing community and history, and offers advice to prize entrants and literary hopefuls of all kinds.

Ahead of our free online event on 25 April – Education: Reimagination, Decolonisation, and Change – we spoke to co-guest-editor Angelique Golding about curating, commissioning, and editing Wasafiri 112: Reimagining Education. Our winter 2022 special issue, Reimagining Education considers what education means within and beyond the classroom, investigating government intervention and the reclamation and exploration of decolonisation, and addressing the forces of change and continuity in Britain today. Golding talks, among other things, about her hopes for the kinds of conversations this issue will provoke.

Ever wondered what your favourite writer’s first drafts look like? Or which book they love that nobody’s heard of?  Wasafiri Wonders is a series that asks these questions for you.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 112: Reimagining Education, Angelique Golding talks with poet and playwright Inua Ellams on adapting Chekhov's Three Sisters for the National Theatre and in the context of the Biafran War, his Hausa heritage, the curriculum and his ‘cultural touchstones’, and more.